Online insurance quote systems are known in the art. Similarly, the practice of providing insurance quotes in person or over the telephone is well-known in the art. In the automobile insurance industry, several different types of coverage are available, including bodily injury coverage, property damage coverage, personal injury protection coverage, comprehensive coverage, collision coverage, and uninsured motorist coverage. These coverage types are sometimes referred to as line coverage. Additionally, some firms offer broader insurance coverage, such as liability coverage, sometimes referred to as BIPD coverage, which, broadly speaking, may be a hybrid of bodily injury coverage, property damage coverage, and personal injury coverage. Firms also offer physical damage coverage, sometimes referred to as PhysDam coverage, which, broadly speaking, may be a hybrid of collision coverage and comprehensive coverage. Further, firms also offer combined coverage, which includes all of the above described line coverages.
To calculate an automobile insurance quote, many factors are employed. For example, factors related to the insurance requester, such as age, gender, marital status, and driving record are assigned values or weights that are used in an insurance rate algorithm. Similarly, factors related to the vehicle such as model, retail price, and year are also assigned values or weights that are used in an insurance rate algorithm. The values or weights are assigned according to a correlation with loss costs due to accident and/or theft.
More recently, insurance companies have employed a credit score of the insurance requester as a factor for calculating an insurance quote. The credit score is weighted according to a correlation with loss costs due to accident and/or theft. Because the credit score calculated for insurance purposes is on a different scale from credit scores commonly used in other applications, the credit score is referred to as an “insurance credit score,” or simply, an “insurance score.”